Zionism and Israel - Encyclopedic Dictionary

Ma'alot Massacre

The Maalot massacre was a Palestinian terrorist operation
carried out in an Israeli school in the town of Maalot in Northern Israel, near
the Lebanese border. The events took place in May 1974, and culminated on the
evening of May 15. 26 people, mostly unarmed high school students, were killed
by three Palestinian terrorists. Maalot is located inside green-line Israel.
This area has been part of Israel since 1948. The victims were not "settlers" or
"colonists" or religious fanatics.

Three terrorists of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of
Palestine (DFLP) infiltrated from Lebanon On May 13, dressed in Israel Defense
Force uniforms, coming through the Nahal Mattat nature reserve from south of the
Lebanese village of Ramish. The group entered Israel near Moshav Zar'it . They
were armed with AK-47 assault rifles, hand grenades, and Czech plastic
explosives. They hid overnight in the orchards near the Druze
village of Hurfeish. On their way to Ma'alot, they encountered a van bringing
Christian Arab women from the village of Fassuta home from work at the Ata
textile works in the Haifa Bay area. The leader of the operation, Lini, stood on
the roadway and opened fire on the vehicle, instantly killing one woman, and
wounding both the driver and other workers, one of whom later died of her
wounds. The Druze
driver turned off the headlights and drove in reverse up the hill towards Moshav
Tzuriel.

At Ma'alot, the terrorists knocked on the doors of several homes. Fortuna and
Yosef Cohen heard the noise and opened their door. The terrorists shot and
killed the couple, and their 4-year old son Eliahu. and wounded their 5-year old
daughter Miriam. Fortuna, seven months pregnant, tried to flee, but was also
shot. The sole family member who survived unhurt was 16-month-old Yitzhak, a
deaf-mute.

The terrorists then went to the Netiv Meir elementary school where Safed High
School students on a school trip were lodged. They met Yaakov Kadosh, a
sanitation worker, and asked for directions to the school. They beat and shot
him, leaving him for dead.

Netiv Meir elementary school was a three-story concrete building with
apartment buildings under construction nearby. The terrorists entered the
building at 4 a.m., taking 102 students hostage. Some managed to escape by
jumping out of windows, but 85 students and several teachers were held hostage.
The students were forced to sit on the floor at gunpoint, with explosive charges
between them.

In the morning, the captors demanded the release of 26 terrorist prisoners,
including Kozo Okamoto - a Japanese Red Army terrorist involved in the 1972 Lod
Airport Massacre. They announcedthat they would kill the students if the
terrorists were not released. The deadline was set for 6:00 p.m. the same day.

The Israelis asked for more time and tried to meet the terrorists'
conditions. According to at least one
source, the terrorists decided to massacre the children after they failed to
get a code word from their Damascus controllers. Apologists later claimed
falsely that the fatalities were due to the Israeli raid that evening, The
terrorists had already murdered women and children and clearly intended to
murder others. Lini murdered children deliberately and for no reason, at great
peril to his personal safety.

The
BBC notes that the Maalot terror operation was one of a series of operations
planned to protest the 26th Independence day of Israel The Palestinian massacre
probably was not really intended to free prisoners or to protest the post-1967
occupation.

Israeli Sayeret Matkal
commandoes began an assault at !7:26 hours. The assault force was divided into
three units; Two units broke in from the entrance; a third was to climb a ladder
and enter from a window facing north. At 17:32 the first squad entered the
building through the main entrance on the first floor, which was blocked with
tables and chairs. The first three-man team, led by Yuval Galili of Kibbutz
Geva was hit by gunfire on the stairs leading to the second floor. Galili threw
a phosphorus grenade into the second floor hallway to create a smokescreen. The
smoke from the explosion blinded the second team led by Amiram Levine, which had
been ordered to take out Lini, the terrorist leader.

Lini showed a great deal of tenacity and bravery in fulfilling his terrorist
mission. Though it was obvious he could not free any prisoners, Lini
managed to reach the classroom, grab ammunition clips from the teacher’s desk
and reload his weapon. He then sprayed the students with machine gun fire and
tossed grenades out the window. When a burst of fire broke his left wrist, he
threw two grenades at a group of girls huddled on the floor. Several students
leaped from the windows to the ground, some ten feet below.

The killing of an infant and the slaughtering of people ... was
never carried out by any Palestinians for national motives or revenge.

Ami Isseroff

March 15, 2011

Synonyms and alternate spellings:

Further Information:

Hebrew/Arabic pronunciation and
transliteration conventions:

'H
- ('het) a guttural sound made deep in the throat. To Western ears it may
sound like the "ch" in loch. In Arabic there are several letters that
have similar sounds. Examples: 'hanukah, 'hamas, 'haredi. Formerly, this sound
was often represented by ch, especially in German transliterations of
Hebrew. Thus, 'hanukah is often rendered as Chanuka for example.

ch
- (chaf) a sound like "ch" in loch or the Russian Kh
as in Khruschev or German Ach, made by putting the tongue against
the roof of the mouth. In Hebrew, a chaf can never occur at the beginning of a
word. At the beginning of a word, it has a dot in it and is pronounced "Kaf."

u
- usually between oo as in spoon and u as in put.

a-
sounded like a in arm

ah-
used to represent an a sound made by the letter hey at the end of a word.
It is the same sound as a. Haganah and Hagana are alternative acceptable
transliterations.

'a-notation
used for Hebrew and Arabic
ayin, a guttural ah sound.

o
- close to the French o as in homme.

th
- (taf without a dot) - Th was formerly used to transliterate the Hebrew
taf sound for taf without a dot. However in modern Hebrew there is no
detectable difference in standard pronunciation of taf with or without a dot,
and therefore Histadruth and Histadrut, Rehovoth and Rehovot are all acceptable.

q-
(quf) - In transliteration of Hebrew and Arabic, it is best to
consistently use the letter q for the quf, to avoid confusion with similar
sounding words that might be spelled with a kaf, which should be transliterated
as K. Thus, Hatiqva is preferable to Hatikva for example.